While most you take it as an affront when it’s mentioned because you think it’s some kind of character flaw or that you are being attacked on a personal level, that is far from the case. White privilege is nothing more than you being given a slight advantage simply because of the color of your skin. Again, it’s not about INDIVIDUAL experience it’s about COLLECTIVE experience. No one cares how one particular store treated you ONCE when you went in there. Everything isn’t about YOU the individual.

It exists whether you choose to acknowledge it or not just like racism does. You can attempt to sweep it under the rug but that does not mean it isn’t there. Like I said, it has just gone into hiding.

Many of you want to know what you can do about it. I read something very interesting last night about what you can do. The answer is to UNTEACH racism. How? Start by telling the truth. You know that thing you all have an aversion to when it comes slavery and your heinous treatment of non-whites in this country. Tell THAT truth because although slavery is the biggest stain on the fabric of the US, it isn’t THE only stain.

Tell the truth about slavery, tell the truth about how this country was founded and NOT just from the white man’s side of the tale, tell it ALL. Tell how Irish were treated (indentured servitude is NOT the same as slavery, more about that in a moment.)Tell how the Chinese were treated, tell the truth about how during WWII all Japanese Americans were put in camps because ya’ll were afraid they weren’t “loyal Americans.” Tell how Native Americans were treated and that the reason that they were eventually shuffled onto reservations and forgotten. Tell the truth about Lincoln. TELL IT ALL. As my ex husband used to say “tell the truth and shame the devil.”

Once you tell it people will begin to see us as HUMANS not as heathens or animals that need to be saved from themselves or “rescued” then maybe you will change hearts. Hopefully they will see WHY things are the way they are and WHY a lot of blacks are angry.

There is another thing you can STOP doing, that’s telling US to “get over” what was done and what is still being done to Blacks in this country. You just changed how it looks versus what it USED to look like. And STOP, when someone brings up white privilege or slavery interjecting with “Irish were slaves too.” No, they were not. Do you know that the difference is between indentured servitude and slavery? One of them eventually gets to go free and the other is for life and those of their children and their children’s children. THAT is the difference. Stop trying to justify your ancestors bullsh! because all of your asses aren’t Irish either.

Stop treating us like animals. Understand that this privilege is the reason why a lot of us are victims of the school-to-prison pipeline. They treat black and brown students, male and female differently than they do their white counterparts. Don’t get me wrong some of them need to have their behinds tore up from the floor up but guess what, you all made it a crime to discipline our children as we see fit. That is why some of them are out of control. That doesn’t mean treat them like animals though. Just like there is a fine line between discipline and abuse, there is a fine line between control through terror and discipline.

Now let us talk about how racism STILL exists. You just refuse to see it in its new form. Take example, that school-to-prison pipeline is very real. Test scores are used to determine the number of prisons needed in the future. Studies, out of California have shown that black and brown students, as in the real world, are treated differently than their white peers as if setting them up to fail. What I mean by that is offenses committed by black/brown students are dealt with swiftly and harshly versus if the same offense were committed by a white student. THAT is the beginning.